Asset-Map: Sales and Education Financial Structure Visualization Tool

By Vasyl Soloshchuk/ Insart

Financial advice involves traditionally complex or obscure concepts and the necessity to track multiple financial decisions simultaneously, which is why clear visualization of the facts and structure is crucial. Asset-Map is designed to be a client household visualization of all of the facts that matter when making good financial decisions. It enables the advisor to construct a unique visualization that includes people and entities, income sources, current and expected assets, retirement assets, non-qualified assets, business interests, liabilities as well as assets that may come into play in the future, such as insurance policies. At the core of Asset-Map, it focuses on the advisor as the “engine of advice- not the algorithm”; therefore, they are trying to provide tech that facilitates human interaction, as opposed to technology that facilitates the decision or analytical capability.

To get more details about the company, we had an in-person interview with Adam Holt (CEO) in Asset-Map’s office in Philadelphia, which is located in the historical Philadelphia Bourse building- the first commodities exchange in the U.S.

Adam was primarily a designer, and he then moved to wealth management where he advised for the last 20 years. This extraordinary background—for a wealth-management person—led him to turn asset visualization around the other way:

"When I got into finance, I realized [that] the biggest challenge was that consumers did not necessarily understand the context under which advisors were providing guidance. […] I saw that [high-net-worth clients] really wanted summaries, and expected that we were doing a lot of the analytical work in the background. They wanted to focus on whether they were making good decisions at all times and not get stuck in the analytics.”

His idea was to focus on more of an educational and a conversational approach to earn more credibility and trust with clients and get them to take action much faster. The indication was that financial advisors needed to use a tool that would help them communicate with clients.

“The truth is that most advisors can communicate effectively with very simple tools. One is a piece of paper and a pen to communicate relationships visually, the other is a calculator. With these two things, an effective advisor can do 90% without the computer and robust technology.”

For these reasons, Adam decided to start the new project, which would NOT be a financial planning tool, a CRM, or a portfolio analytics instrument. Instead, he specifically focused on implementing a great visual framework that would be able to break the ice when acquiring new clients, or reviewing existing, and would also be valuable delivery for clients.

“I think the biggest revelation for Asset-Map is that most [of] its customers actually want the visual simplicity of their current financial state, but they’ve never seen it before, so they don’t know what it looks like or how to ask for it from their advisor.”

Asset-Map business model

Right now, Asset-Map has approximately 3,200 advisors using the platform—half of those are enterprise level and the other half are individual branded firms and advisors. Currently, 2% of Asset-Map’s customers are located outside of the US, and this number is expanding steadily. The platform itself has now cataloged over 300,000 households, representing the financial instruments of over $300 billion, and 75% of advisors are using it daily in their practices.